Godzilla 2000 (1999) Review

Radioactive Rage Month continues with the movie that started the Millennium series of Godzilla films. After the disappointing American attempt at Japan’s iconic monster, Toho Studios decided to bring the big galoot back years ahead of schedule. The hastily put together result was a messy mash up of ideas from previous decades, special effects experimentation, and the occasional spectacular scene.

Toho originally planned to make a new Godzilla movie for the 50th anniversary of the character in 2004, leaving the franchise temporarily in Hollywood’s hands. Though profitable, 1998’s Godzilla was a large disappointment. Consequently,ideas for a trilogy were scrapped. A mere year after that turkey posing as a kaiju skittered onto the silver screen, the real Godzilla returned to fight another monster on Japanese soil.

This review covers the American edited and dubbed release, one of the very rare ones to hit theaters in the States. It only made $10 million in North America, so it was here and gone again in the blink of an eye. There were some good reasons for this…

One of the things a close friend and I have talked about for years is going storm chasing. Finances, timing, health, and his wife’s lack of enthusiasm have been factors in preventing this from happening. So when the film starts with Godzilla chasers calling themselves the Godzilla Prediction Network setting up antennae out in the howling wind I had to smile. What a great concept!

Leading the mobile unit and entire organization is Professor Shinoda (Takehiro Murata, veteran Godzilla actor) assisted by my personal bane, the overly smart and pushy kid written like an adult. Io (Mayu Suzuki) is simultaneously his daughter, mother, and boss in the film so she wiped the smile right off of my face. Adding to the pain is the presence of a whiny reporter, Yuki Ichinose (Naomi Nishida). She may be easy on the eyes, but she isn’t on the ears.

They’re out tracking down electromagnetic signals (I think) given off by Godzilla somewhere nearby. In a nod to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a lighthouse in the same windy storm appears in a moody shot. A rather impressive scene plays out when the captain of the tower looks outside the main window to witness a fishing boat go by – several stories up in the air.

In the dim lights, the head of Godzilla is seen with the trawler in his massive jaws. Now that’s an intimidating entrance worthy of note. It also looks really good, which surprised me and evoked some of the mood of the original Gojira. My hopes for the movie went up despite the cute kid’s presence.

Soon things come tumbling down, but nobody is really injured. In fact, it is shown in such a deliberate way as to remove the scary atmosphere out that had just been built up. And so came tumbling down my hopes as well. This is going to be a kids flick like most Godzilla entries since the classic original rather than a serious take.

Approaching the attacked area, the trio of monster trackers follow a trail of debris into a tunnel where they end up in an up close and personal encounter with their quarry. It completely puts to shame the similar bit in Godzilla (1998) though you will want to smack Yuki by this point due to her being seriously annoying. An understanding of what makes a giant monster frightening is shown well.

Another nod to the original movie from ‘54 can be spotted in Godzilla’s looking over the crest of a hill. Keeping him shrouded in darkness early on demonstrates just how effective that old technique is at making a man in a rubber suit look like a real monster. It’s also a far better usage of rain than in the Hollywood film.

Since this is yet another comeback/reboot of the Big G, I should discuss the changes to his appearance. For the Millennium series, they shrunk him back down to around 164 feet from the 300 foot plus height of the Heisei era films. This was an interesting change since he’d been jacked up to make up for the increased height of modern skyscrapers.

After four decades of being gray,he’s now green. Yes, you can check that out, but it is the truth that he was always gray. Oddly, purple has been added to his color scheme. Specifically, his dorsal fins are varying shades of the regal color. They are also much more angular, long, and jagged than before. More than ever, they dominate the look of the mutant lizard in direct contrast to the abbreviated ones on Emmerich’s version.

Moving on to the head, it is much more dragon like than any previous incarnation. A flared and thickened neck reduces the relative width of the shoulders for a more dinosaur like appearance rendering him more peach shaped. Everything about this design screams out “PREDATOR!!!” and I’m not talking about the alien hunter that gave Schwarzenegger so much trouble.

While ‘G’ makes his first appearance really early, the film still has a couple of important human characters to establish. At some kind of government or business dinner function, a bespectacled nerd informs a bulging eyed sharp dressed official type Mysterious comments about a meteorite are exchanged between Professor Miyasaka (Shiro Sano) and the perpetually glaring Katagiri (Hiroshi Abe) that hints of a conspiracy.

Interesting fact: nothing at all was hinted at or explained in the original Japanese dialogue for the scene. Huge amounts of information on relationships, technical concepts, and details were simply omitted in the original film. This was one of the reasons all but one or two lines were rewritten by the American dubbing crew!

Reestablishing Godzilla as destructive force was a priority after the anemic showing by Zilla in New York City. Wasting very little time, the monster wades into an urban area sending people fleeing in terror and fire engines racing to put out the flames. The latter was a welcome sight for if kaiju really existed they’d be keeping firefighters and EMTs very busy indeed. Some very nice composited effects shots make the first rampage highly entertaining.

Being a feisty monster on the go, Godzilla heads out into the neighboring countryside in search of power plants to destroy. Here the dichotomous nature of the film rears its ugly head again. A great concept of Shinoda and company chasing the monster from the distance recalls storm chasers pursuing tornados starts out with some decent effects work. Then a simple perspective change aims even higher only to fall flat to the point of yanking the viewer out of the requisite suspension of disbelief.

Aggravating this is the very stupid comic bit involving a broken windshield, wipers, and Yuki’s incessant complaining. It also makes the supposedly brilliant Shinoda look like an idiot. No wonder his eleven year old daughter runs things.

There is a lot of cutting back and forth between settings which I wish could be reported as reflecting a complicated plot. Alas, that is not the case and from what I understand was even worse in the original edit. Suffice it to say that a big honking rock joins the storyline, one that is being lifted from the ocean floor because it could solve the world’s energy problems.

How? Beats me, for they never explain it. Nope, not even a shred of technobabble is employed to enlighten us.

Being a proper B-movie, things have to start going wrong and so they do. Old school Japanese miniature work transitions over to CG missing every beat along the way. As cheesy as the toy submarine and underwater gear looked, the rock bobbing between four incredibly badly computer rendered ships is far worse. If you are going to sell a rock floating in the first place, practical effects are impossible to beat.

I sound like I’m picking on the effects too much and I have a good reason to. It’s because they are the best part of the movie. While there is a plot, it’s a fill in the blanks kind of story with simple arcs. Furthermore, there are individual shots that are genuinely good making the bad ones more offensive to the senses.

Continuing in that vein, two of the worst offenders come in one battle. JSDF AH-1 Cobra’s swoop into combat against Godzilla for what should have been a thrilling fight. Instead, the bad CG of the attack helicopters stick out out like a sore thumb from the real backgrounds superimposed on. Seeing brief clips of real ones make it that much worse.

Godzilla’s wading on shore should have been spectacular, but his feet and ankles keep disappearing! His steps don’t quite synch up with the footage of the real bayside either. Once again, a great idea poorly executed cripples the scene.

I should mention human shenanigans involving the meteor rock, Yuki being an idiot, and the Godzilla Prediction Network have been going on too. Ah, that’s enough about the boring humans, let’s get back to the real appeal of the movie: Godzilla trashing things! Get out your kaiju movie checklist and start marking off tanks, rockets, jet fighters, and helicopters attacking… and failing.

As the battle of the bay goes on, the effects start improving. This is mainly due to going back to practical effects shot at a low angle. Particularly effective is the rocket attack launched by a general complete with a colorful line lifted from Patton to describe the new weapon’s capability. It’s a violent attack that actually hurts the Big G, however anything that doesn’t kill him only serves to make him angrier.

In the middle of all this, the rock flies into the battle. Yeah, you read that right. Not only can it float on water, it can fly on its own. Where we humans would be slack jawed at this spectacle, you can see the reaction of Godzilla above. Even when surprised, he’s all hostility and glares with great intensity. Well, not as forecefully as Katagiri perhaps.

So begins a mighty energy beam battle between a giant mutant lizard and humongous flying rock. Yep, it’s that kind of movie. Just give in and go with it, your head will hurt a great deal less. At least the CG usage has massively improved the appearance of Godzilla’s radioactive breath.

Inconclusive and short is how I’d describe the duel, with both combatants withdrawing. A curious thing is noticed by the human observers: the blasted part of the rock now reveals smooth metal. That means it is a UFO, not a 60 million year old meteor!

You can check off aliens being the real enemy off of the Godzilla tropes list now. Also check off people on a train in peril. Does a toy submarine count as a toy boat? If so, mark that off as well.

When it turns out the UFO is an ecofriendly alien device of mass destruction (you think I’m kidding, don’t you?), the stage is set for a confrontation in Tokyo. Buildings will be blown up, beams will blast through the air, monsters will wrestle, and Yuki will get hauled off! Unfortunately, one of these things only happens once…

Oh and there will be glaring.

Thoughts

Godzilla 2000 is one of those movies that you wished could have turned out better due to the brief flashes of potential shown. There are many shots that almost look spectacular and are framed with great style if not artistry. Sadly, they are always bookended by scenes of broad comedy, terrible effects, and draggy human interaction. And that’s after nine minutes were cut by the American editors to tighten the film. I can only imagine what the original version was like.

Despite my complaints, it is still far better than the Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin production foisted upon the world a year earlier. I may not like the storyline, but at least the actors didn’t seem like they were phoning in their performances. The biggest plus is having the real Godzilla back rather than that wimpy mutated iguana.

It may not be a masterpiece, but the film achieves what it sets out to do: restore Godzilla to all his glory and give us a proper monster against monster fight. For that alone the movie is praise worthy. It’s also a lot of fun if you don’t take any of it seriously and features a pretty good final fight.

Tsutomu Kitagawa steps into the monster suit to portray the Big G as a vicious alpha predator with a hint of intelligence. Godzilla is menacing and always dangerous in the movie, brutal and primal. You’ll never imagine seeing him nose to nose with Mathew Broderick like Zilla. Eating him, maybe.

The English language dub is nothing to write home about and pretty standard for an Asian film brought over here. An English dub was done in Japan and provided to Sony/Tristar here, but was thrown completely out as unusable. Besides providing new voices, new music was composed by J. Peter Robinson and added to Tayuki Hattori’s rather good existing score along with tracks from earlier efforts by Akira Ifukube. It’s very seamless in execution to my surprise.

Not content to stop there, many sound effects were added and at least a couple of inserted close ups of props! While keeping faithful to the original movie, a lot was shuffled around to improve the pacing.

A true PG rated movie, the worst content is some monster flesh being blown off without any blood being shed. Clearly aimed at kids, the movie is suitable for kids six and up in my opinion. Kaiju fans, Godzilla worshippers, and people looking for something relatively mindless to kill some time with will enjoy the movie.

Technical

Perhaps one day I’ll get the Hong Kong DVD of the Japanese version, but for the moment the Sony Tristar DVD from 2000 is the one I own. It’s a fairly decent release from that time period with a smattering of extras.

Video is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen so it blows up nicely to a modern HDTV. While color saturation is good and the contrast acceptable, it appears like everything was run through an unsharp mask filter set too high. This is a sign of heavy handed denoising which wasn’t unusual for DVD releases fourteen years ago.

As a side note and getting back to the contrast, the movie looks better on my HDTV which is LED backlit than it does on the Asus monitor of my PC. I’ve begun noticing this more with darker movies, so I hope the screen captures are neutral enough in reality. I really should check them out on the media center after posting.

Audio options come in various flavors of Dolby Digital. The English track is 5.1 surround while the option French and commentary tracks are 2.0 Stereo Surround. Subtitles in both languages are provided. Since this is a full re-edit of the movie, the original Japanese track isn’t available and wouldn’t match up anyway.

Extras are accessed through the very creative animated menus which are some of the best I’ve seen on any DVD. Yeah, it’s all 4:3 ratio, but man are they fun to click around. I just wish the extras themselves were as entertaining.

Behind the Scenes – At a little over two minutes long, this footage lacks subtitles though they aren’t needed given the content. Glimpses of the miniature sets being blown up is hit or miss, but will give you an idea of how certain scenes were executed.

Too much time is spent showing a dull stomping of a scale power station and not enough of suit actor Kitagawa receiving instructions from the director. Subs would have been very helpful here.

Talent Files – Only two involved in the movie are profiled: director Takao Okawara and the start of the film himself. All the fun items are under Godzilla’s profiles including his fight stats up to 2000.

Theatrical Trailers – These are all North American trailers, so you get the 1998 abomination, this film, and Anaconda. I guess the last was thrown in since it was a minor hit and featured something big and scaly. Above is the coolest of the menus in my opinion.

Audio Commentary – In an unusual move, Tristar had the U.S. producer/writer Michael Schlesinger, sound editor Darren Paskal, and editor Mike Mahoney do the honors. Normally you don’t get the guys doing the editing on a commentary and in Godzilla films it is normally a film historian recruited to explain things.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to cut apart and reassemble a foreign film this is the commentary track for you. I thought it would be really boring, but it turned out to be interesting in a technical way. Tidbits revealed include the redo being done in two months which is an insane schedule and how they even replaced the Godzilla roars. Nothing went untouched to my amazement.

BEWARE! HERE BE SPOILERS!!!

 

 

 

 

The first appearance of an all CG Godzilla by Toho is an underwater swimming shot that looks off, probably from being too lightened. I always imagined his forearms being folded behind him for better hydrodynamics. Given the progress in Japanese effects in the Gamera trilogy of the 1990s, it was dismaying to see how badly Toho handled digital effects in this flick.

The best CG is the most primitive in the movie. The infrared view of the energy tentacles coming out of the UFO is actually a good looking scene. A big part of that is the UFO being a practical miniature.

Speaking of practical effect, I liked the design of the bombs and how they were mounted for the attack. But what were they? Nothing was explained when they were clearly something special.

Katagiri had varying levels of glares depending on how he felt and little else in the way of expressions. A hammy villain to be sure, but it got ridiculous how many times he gave a withering look at someone next to him. The actor has gone on to better things if IMDB is to be believed.

What would a monster movie with timed bombs be without the ticking watch shot? I suspect this Rolex and a Swatch seen earlier were inserted by the American editors. It is such a B-movie trope that it would have been a crime not to have one in it.

A tale of two building explosions unfolds. The human bombs make a good show, but the retaliatory alien pulse ray makes it look puny in comparison. Not too shabby effects are displayed and it is one of the nods to Independence Day contained in the story.

Shinoda’s escape was pretty farfetched. At least it allowed Io to act more like a real little girl. She and Yuki had the only character arcs with the girl becoming more vulnerable. That led to Yuki stepping up and finally acting like an adult in order to help the child. There’s a very restrained proto romance between Shinoda and Yuki that’s very Japanese, which means it can only be hinted at around the edges.

Godzilla’s entry into Shinjuku is one of the best effects scenes, if not the best. A terrific sense of scale is instilled in the viewer. From hear on out, it is just one big brawl just as it should be.

Glowing orange spines and the same colored breath is odd sense both were blue during the earlier fight. It may be a decision made due to different lighting conditions, but I liked the yellow orange coloration better.

A subplot about Godzilla’s ability to shrug off damage involves his cell samples being able to regrow themselves. Dubbed “Regenerator G1,” they telegraphed something important would happen related to that ability. Little did I expect what since making a weapon against them was logical.

Instead, G’s Wolverine like ability to heal leads the UFO to suck the DNA out of him to clone an alien. For a brief moment, Orga (as dubbed in promotional materials but never named in the movie) looks like something from The War of the Worlds. Not a bad design, is it?

But since Godzilla is dominant, so are his cells and Orga mutates rapidly into a funky amalgam of Predator, Alien, and Ebirah. Bigger than G, he’s both a brawler and a ray projector. Godzilla takes him and the UFO out after quite a fight.

Of course, Orga has to get up again. After all, he can regenerate too. Then he tries to swallow Godzilla and I think the looks on the faces on the humans witnessing the event say it all. Yeah, creepy doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Stupid might. Trying to swallowing a walking nuclear reactor who spouts radiation blasts from his mouth is not a wise decision. It does not end well for the invader and the world is saved.

Katagiri goes out in style, screaming Godzilla’s name as they glare at each other. Puny human…

The ending of the movie was changed a bit for the better in the new edit. Using silence except for the music and dialogue created an evocative ending as Godzilla torches Shinjuku. It does much to establish he’s a force totally out of humanity’s control unlike Zilla who went down like a chump.

Yeah, Godzilla is back, baby!